Stories for July 2018

UK police have launched a murder inquiry after a woman who was exposed to the nerve agent novichok died in hospital on Sunday evening. Mother-of-three Dawn Sturgess, 44, died at Salisbury District Hospital, Scotland Yard said.

A shoe is all that is left of one of the poachers who broke into a South African game reserve to hunt rhinos, and ended up eaten by a pride of lions. At least three hunters are believed to have been devoured by the predators at the Sibuya Game Reserve near Kenton-on-Sea in Eastern Province, South Africa, earlier this week.

President Mauricio Macri and his cabinet will be celebrating Argentina's Independence Day, Monday 9 July at the Historic House in the northern province of Tucuman, where the declaration was first announced 202 years ago. Contrary to other years there will be no military parade in Tucuman or Buenos Aires, allegedly as a consequence of the strict austerity measures imposed by the Macri administration.

The chief justice of a Brazilian appeals court blocked another judge’s efforts to release imprisoned former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Sunday, in a legal battle over the country’s most popular politician ahead of an October election.

On a residential street corner in Buenos Aires, Van Koning Market sells imported beers to the city’s well-heeled. Since it opened in June last year costs have soared. The peso has plummeted, meaning wholesale prices have shot up. Inflation is running at 26%; the reduction of government subsidies means the monthly electricity bill has risen from 700 pesos to 4,000 pesos (US$ 142).

Brexit Secretary David Davis has resigned from the UK government. His resignation comes days after Theresa May secured the cabinet's backing for her Brexit plan despite claims from critics that it was “soft”. Mr. Davis was appointed to the post in 2016 and was responsible for negotiating the UK's EU withdrawal. Junior minister S.Baker quit shortly after Mr. Davis - as Mrs. May prepares to face MPs and peers this Monday.

The cabinet has reached a “collective” agreement on the basis of the UK's future relationship with the EU after Brexit, Theresa May has said. Ministers have signed up to a plan to create a free trade area for industrial and agricultural goods with the bloc, based on a “common rule book”.

Voters must be given a say on the final outcome of Brexit talks between Britain and the rest of the European Union, a senior member of the Scottish Government has said. Mike Russell, the Constitutional Relations Secretary in Nicola Sturgeon’s cabinet, said that people “require” such a ballot.